Ordnance Survey is currently promoting the GeoVation Challenge with a particular emphasis on the use of OS OpenData. EDINA’s Digimap OpenStream service, providing access to a Web Map Service (WMS) offering OS OpenData products, is available free of charge and can be used to enter the GeoVation Challenge! You just need a .ac.uk email address to register online. Read on for details of the innovation awards funding and prize money.

The current Challenge is “How can we improve transport in Britain?” Check the GeoVation Challenge website for further details. The challenge is open until 12.00 noon on 11 February 2011. If you have a great idea that uses geography to address the challenge, you could win a slice of £150,000 to help make it happen, funded by the Ideas in Transit project. There is also a share of £10,000 for the idea that demonstrates the best use of OS OpenData. The Challenge is open to UK residents 18 and over.

Here at EDINA we are constantly evaluating our services and really value user feedback. Our funders are also keen to know what impact the services have. We are currently assessing how satisfied our users are with the Digimap Collections so we can gauge how well we are doing. Please could you fill in a quick user satisfaction survey for each of the Digimap Collections you use; you can pass on the links to anyone else you know who uses Digimap.

The survey is very short with only 5 questions after you have put in some details about yourself. All data collected will be held anonymously and securely. No cookies are used in the completion of the survey.

EDINA has been asked to post the following request for assistance regarding the usability of geographic information. Please follow the links below if you can help.

Hey Everyone,

My name is Michael Brown; I’m working with the University of Nottingham in conjunction with Ordnance Survey to develop a set of User Centred Design Tools for use with Geographic Information.

As part of this I am currently working on a questionnaire for the measurement of the Usability of Geographic Information. The next stage of this process is to validate the questionnaire by getting people to complete it, focusing on a few specific products. This will allow me to calculate how well it differentiates between different GI data sets as well as providing useful information about the products that will be fed back to Ordnance Survey.

If you have any experience with any of these products, I’d appreciate your help. Please follow the relevant link(s) and complete the questionnaire(s). This version is fairly short and should take less than 5 minutes to complete.

Feel free to complete more than one of them and please forward this on to anyone you think might be able to help me collect responses. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at: michael.brown@ordnancesurvey.co.uk

As indicated in a previous post, EDINA is creating a new version of the existing Classic mapping facility.

A sneaky peek at the new interface under development....

Given that the new facility works in a very different way, we would like to give it a new name. We have a number of suggestions, and would like to know your views on them. To this end, we have posted a poll on this blog (look to the top right hand side of this window) for you to vote with.

There are a number of things we need to take into account in choosing a name. For example:

1. It needs to give the mapping facility an identity. When users contact our helpdesk asking for assistance with it, they need to be able to refer to it by name with confidence that we will know what they are referring to. Similarly, our helpdesk need to be confident that they understand which facility a user is talking about, and using an easily identifiable and catchy name for it is an easy means to that end.

2. It needs to be memorable – users need to know which facility they are using.

3. It needs to be unique, not used by any other mapping organisation for a mapping service or product.

Vote on the blog here, or if you would rather, send us an email with your ideas. Thanks for your help!

EDINA is undertaking a survey to understand more about support for online geospatial resources, spatial data, GIS and related software. We would like to learn more about what support and training is currently available, what is useful and what might be provided to improve the support available.

If you have any kind of support role with respect to spatial data, GIS, CAD or geospatial resources we would be grateful if you would complete the following survey and would pass it on to others who are also involved in supporting users of all things geospatial.

This is NOT a service-specific survey, so anyone involved in supporting users of geospatial data and resources has something valuable to contribute. Please pass it on. Gathering feedback is a challenging task, so your efforts to complete these questions is very much appreciated.

The survey should take around 20 minutes to complete and the majority of questions are multiple choice checkboxes. There will be a prize draw for four £25 Amazon vouchers. Please enter your name and email address at the end of the survey if you wish to be entered into the draw.

JISC Collections has an opportunity to add Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI) data to the Digimap Collections. Before a final decision is made to pursue this agreement JISC Collections would like to guage interest in these mapping data from existing subscribers. JISC Collections would welcome feedback on whether or not your institution would participate in an agreement to supply OSNI data through Digimap Collections.

It has been proposed that the following data be included in the licensing arrangement. The suggested formats are also given for each dataset:

The suggested prices for an institutional subscription to this agreement vary according to JISC’s institutional banding, and are as follows:

Higher Education

Bands A-B – £750 per annum

Bands C-D – £600 per annum

Bands E-F – £400 per annum

Bands G-J – £100 per annum

Further Education

All bands – £75 per institution

If you would find it useful to have access to Northern Ireland data, please contact your Digimap site representative to express an interest in a subscription. If you don’t know who your site representative is, please check the list on our website: http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/list.shtml

If you are a Digimap Site Representative, please gather feedback you receive from Digimap users at your institution and contact Liam Earney (L.Earney@jisc.ac.uk) if you would like to express an interest in a subscription for your institution.

EDINA strives to provide face-to-face training for Digimap which is appropriate, comprehensive and meets the needs of site representatives in supporting Digimap. To this end, we are conducting a training needs survey, in order to establish how to improve the training we offer for Digimap. The results of the survey will inform a review of current training and will assist us in improving what we offer.

The survey is online and should not take more than two or three minutes to complete. Please click the link below. We welcome your views.

Reminder of new licence agreement
A new, three-year sub-licence is now available for Historic Digimap, the service offering historic Ordnance Survey maps and data from the Landmark Information Group. Current subscribing institutions will be contacted directly to ensure continued access from 1 August 2008 onwards. The new licence will run from 1 August 2008 until 31 July 2011. Full details, including subscription forms and costs, can be found on the JISC Collections website at: http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/catalogue/coll_digimap_historic.aspx

Consultation on additional datasets
JISC Collections are currently running a consultation for the purchase of additional datasets for Historic Digimap. Among the suggested purchases are the GOAD Fire Insurance plans and historical town plans.

Representatives from existing institutions and others interested in the Collection are invited to complete the short survey at their earliest convenience. This can be done online, and should take only a few minutes to complete: